All Hallows' Eve

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Hallowe'en, also known as All Hallows' Eve, is a holiday observed on October 31 which has almost completely ingrained itself into American life and, in turn, the global culture.

The roots of what we now know as Halloween can be traced back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced "sah-win"), which means "summer's end". The Celts believed that the "veil" between the worlds of the living and the dead was thin from the last night of October through to the first night of November. It was the Celtic new year, a time when spiritual power heightened, marking the last harvest, the end of foraging for livestock, and the beginning of winter. Samhain was then adapted into the Catholic celebration of All Saints' Day, or "All Hallows' Eve", which was then contracted into "Halloween".note "Hallow" is an archaic term from English's Germanic roots meaning "Saint"; During All Hallows Day, or Hallowmas, Christians would hold a mass in celebration of the lives of all the Saints, including (and especially) those who don't have a dedicated feast day. The night before is known as All Hallows' Eve, similar to how the night before Christmas is known as Christmas Eve. The following day is All Souls Day, during which a mass is held in memory of all deceased Christians. The three days together (known as a "triduum") is known as "Allhallowtide". Originally, in the seventh century, All Saints' Day was celebrated on May 13th, right after Easter. A few centuries later, it was shifted to November, to incorporate Celtic Samhain traditions in an effort to convert pagans. Some Orthodox churches continue to celebrate it in April, as did the Irish for a time.

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Many of the modern practices associated with Halloween have their roots in these two old festivals.

People would disguise themselves if they went out on Hallow's Eve, so the spirits would mistake them for one of their own and leave them alone.

The Celts believed that if a spirit came to your house, you had to feed it, or it would curse you. This, combined with the related Christian practice of souling or guising (coming to peoples doors and praying for the dead in exchange for food or money) developed into modern trick-or-treating.

Apple bobbing was originally one of many divination methods practiced on Samhain, sometimes to foretell the events of the new year but often to foretell whom you would marry. (There was a similar ritual involving kale if the kales roots had soil stuck to it when you pulled it out of the ground, your husband would be wealthy!)

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The original jack-o'-lanterns were turnips, not pumpkins, because pumpkins are native to North America. Now, carved pumpkins are practically synonymous with Halloween, because Irish immigrants in America found them more available and easier to carve.

Some people still light bonfires on Halloween. For Christians and pagans, bonfires represent the continued presence of the sun as the days grew shorter, and were used to drive away spirits/the devil/etc. and guide the souls of loved ones back home.

Halloween was imported to the U.S. and Canada in the 19th century, a time that saw substantial Irish and Scottish migration to the New World. Back in this time, Halloween in North America was more of a celebration of Irish and Scottish national heritage than anything else, much like St. Patrick's Day for Irish Americans or Columbus Day for Italian Americans. It was celebrated with large feasts, apple bobbing, and other divination games, as well as pranks and mischief. By the turn of the century, the "pranks and mischief" had become the defining feature of Halloween, turning it into a night of vandalism. As a result, the Boy Scouts and neighborhood groups started working to turn Halloween back into a safe celebration for youngsters, organizing trick-or-treating events based around the old practice of "guising" to redirect the focus of the festivities away from violence.

With Halloween now becoming a popular celebration outside of Welsh, Irish and Scottish neighborhoods, retailers seized upon a brilliant opportunity to have a new holiday to secularize and commercialize. While there was some commercialization going on before (with mass-produced costumes first appearing in the 1930s), it really took off after World War II, and it hasn't stopped since. In a phenomenon not unlike Christmas Creep, retailers have gradually expanded Halloween from a simple one-night affair to an entire "season" that can begin cropping up as early as August. And sometime around the Turn of the Millennium came the emergence of the Hotter and Sexier, more Stripperiffic Halloween for young adults, opening up a whole secondary market for businesses to cater to.

Today, Halloween is considered a major holiday in the U.S., Canada, Mexico (where it retains more of a Catholic bent, as it falls right before the Día de los Muertos celebrations), and the British Isles (where it is more strongly influenced by the older traditions, particularly in Ireland, Scotland, Northern England and Wales). It has also caught on in mainland Europe, India, the Philippines, and Japan through exposure to American media. Australians are coming under the influence of Halloween due to increasing Americanization but many reject it due to having nothing to do with Celtic-Australian culture, and the heavy commercialization has come under scrutiny. Though the general public recognizes Halloween as a secular holiday, some Christians and Neopagans continue to recognize it as a holy day, sometimes by visiting cemeteries to pray and place flowers and candles on the graves of their loved ones.

The vernal counterpart for the celebrations would be Walpurgisnacht, which occurs on the 30th of April, or Beltane (May Day) on the 1st of May. For other related tropes, see the Halloween section of the Holiday Tropes index.

In popular culture:

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Anime & Manga

Mentioned in one story arc in Umineko: When They Cry where Maria loves Halloween because of its association with witches. She wants to go trick or treating despite the fact that it is not a practice done in Japan.

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: A chapter and episode discuss Halloween on how things change over time to the point they are unrecognizable.

Comic Books

A disproportionate number of EC Comics stories take place on Halloween. To name a few: "Halloween!", "Sugar 'N Spice 'N...", "The October Game,"

Fan Works

The first story in the Ruby and Nora series is Rubys Birthday, which is canonically this holiday.

In Son Of The Western Sea it is the time when the power the Celtic gods is at its greatest in the mortal world, and one of the times The Wild Hunt rides out from the hills. It is also the time where the Mist is at its weakest, if not completely down, allowing mortals to see the Hunt. However, their minds will eventually attempt to rationalise it and they will not remember the truth. Percy being Percy ends up getting dragged along with one of the Hunts chasing the Twrch Trwyth across Ireland.

The classic 1978 slasher flickHalloween involves masked killer Michael Myers slashing his way through his hometown on (of course) Halloween. The other films in the subsequent franchise all take place on the holiday as well. Interestingly enough the original concept had the murders taking place over several days, but budget reasons led to them setting the whole story on one night.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch was an attempt to create an anthology series, but poor response scrapped these ideas and the producers have kept using Myers for the rest of the series. The plot of the film revolves around a man who believes that Halloween has grown too commercialized and has lost touch with its roots in pagan tradition, and seeks to restore that tradition by using his toy company and some Stonehenge-powered magitek to carry out a mass Human Sacrifice.

The horror/comedyanthology film Trick 'r Treat is based around the holiday, and proudly features many of the tropes surrounding it (including the popular conception of Halloween as an old Celtic pagan holiday).

Mean Girls has a scene where Cady goes to a Halloween party. The sluttiness of the women's Halloween costumes is both parodied and exploited for fanservice.

In Van Helsing Anna gets kidnapped by Dracula right before Halloween night, so the climax of the second act takes place at a masquerade ball in Budapest.

Literature

The Dresden Files: Harry's birthday is on Halloween. Which is unfortunate, as spirits tend to get restless that night each year. A plot point in Dead Beat, as Halloween is the optimal night to set off the Darkhallow. This is justified in Cold Days as this night is when the world of Nevernever and human realm are at their closest. The result is the possibility for a mortal to become immortal and for an immortal to be killed this night. Immortals also use this night to recharge some strength by devouring mortals. It was the second or third Merlin who started the custom of dressing as creatures, so immortals would be unsure if their target was mortal or something else. And All Hallows Eve does not end at sunrise, but the first birdsong is sung.

In The Worst Witch Halloween is a sacred holiday for witches. Every year Cackle's Academy goes to a celebration hosted by the Chief Wizard, and they appear to provide some entertainment. In the first book Ethel gets revenge on Mildred by cursing her broomstick to wreck their class's display. In A Bad Spell For The Worst Witch Mildred is banned from the celebrations but sneaks off anyway to get the wizard to turn a friend of hers back from a frog. It's tradition that the morning after the celebrations the whole school has a lie-in until midday.

In the Buffyverse, Halloween is a day of rest for supernatural forces (vampires, demons, etc.), who view the whole celebration as tacky. Buffy the Vampire Slayer also did its requisite Halloween episodes in seasons 2, 4, and 6, with spinoff Angel doing one in season 5.

Charmed has an episode in Season 8 called "Kill Billie Vol 1" that takes place on Halloween but has nothing to do with the holiday - other than revealing that Billie's sister was kidnapped around that time.

American Horror Story: Murder House had the requisite Halloween episode (a two-parter, actually), but notable is how the actual holiday is treated in the show's universe. Specifically, it conflates Halloween with Samhain; it is the day when the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead is briefly lowered, allowing ghosts to go out into and interact with the outside world. Patrick is able to go out to a gay bar and, for one day, escape his loveless relationship with Chad, Moira visits her ill mother and puts her out of her misery, and Tate is able to take Violet out on a date — and is confronted by the ghosts of the classmates he killed (who had been stuck at the school).

American Horror Story: Hotel follows up on this, by having the ghosts of famous serial killers (including John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Zodiac killer, Richard Ramirez, and Aileen Wuornos) use Halloween to hold a "Devil's Night" party at the Hotel Cortez, where they discuss their crimes and carry out new ones against the hotel's hapless living guests. The party is hosted by the ghost of James Patrick Marsh, the man who built the hotel in the 1920s to serve as a massive serial killer lair, filled with hidden passages to dispose of the people he killed. It's implied that the whole party may have been just John Lowe hallucinating from the absinthe he drank, but then again, maybe not.

Roseanne was famous for its annual Halloween episodes, and indeed was one of the very first sitcoms to do them.

Bob Dylan's not-otherwise-Halloweeny "She Belongs to Me" includes the lines:

Bow down to her on Sunday, salute her when her birthday comes For Halloween give her a trumpet, and for Christmas buy her a drum

Tabletop Games

In Mysterium, the ghost is only able to send his visions on Samhain (which equals to Halloween) because the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.

Video Games

Costume Quest features trick-or-treating kids trying to stop monsters that are stealing candy.

Banjo-Kazooie features a Halloween themed world named "Mad Monster Mansion". You even get to transform into a pumpkin in this world, one of the most popular symbols of the holiday.note Just a reminder, Rare is a British developer

Sonic Adventure 2 features Pumpkin Hill as a playable level for Knuckles. As the name suggests, it's a cutesy-horror themed stage with landmarks such as graveyards, churches, and , of course, mountains shaped like jack-o-lanterns. One of Shadow's (few) stages, Sky Rail, also takes place in Pumpkin Hill, but in daylight; a less demonic appeal.

A few days after the Sole Survivor wakes up in Fallout 4, on October 31, Diamond City will be decorated with Halloween decorations, and guards will complain about having to work on Halloween. Also, given that the nuclear apocalypse occured a few days before Halloween (October 23), many locations around the Commonwealth will have Halloween decorations up, especially if they have been untouched since the bombs fell (a detail curiously ignored in the previous games).

Moshi Monsters: The mission "Spooktacular Spectacular" takes place on Halloween.

I Mockery absolutely love this holiday, and all October the site is given a change in design with articles exclusively focusing on the holiday, what candy seems to be handed out this year, impressive (along with kitschy or downright terrible) celebrations throughout America, tributes to old horror games and movies, and the usual antics of the staff getting caught up in the holiday. They have a similar celebration for Christmas as well.

The horror/comedy web novelT.O.T. takes place entirely on Halloween night and focuses on a group of adolescent trick-or-treaters.

Western Animation

The Smurfs have "The Smurfs' Halloween Special" (aka "All Hallows Eve"), which is actually just an episode from their regular Saturday morning series in which Halloween turns out to be Jokey Smurf's and Gargamel's birthday. A similar-themed holiday called Spook-A-Smurf Eve was celebrated in "Monster Smurfs".

The Donald Duck short Trick or Treat has a witch joining forces with Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie to get even with him after he pranks them on Halloween.

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